Cinema Kawakeb
Mahmoud Massad / Jordan, Palestine & Qatar / 2025 / 78 min
A visit to a worn-out backyard cinema in Jordan, where the two employees and their only regular customer become the protagonists in a witty and politically poignant course in filmmaking.
In some dilapidated premises in the Jordanian capital Amman, you will find the small cinema Cinema Kawakeb. Here, two employees are accompanied by a homeless scrap collector and cinefile who is the cinema’s only loyal supporter. But in the wake of COVID, a bad loan, and a conflict between its owners, the cinema’s fate is sealed. Before long, it will be closed and demolished.
Before that happens, the three men and a filmmaker struggle to immortalize the crumbling cinema and the magic that exists in its peeling darkness. Cinema Kawakeb is both a hopeful and tragicomic tale of loss and memories, and of the painful fate of cinema culture across much of the globe. But director Mahmoud Massad also draws parallels to the wider world outside the darkness of the cinema.